Shutter Man

by Richard Montanari

  ‘You saw Mr Channing here?’ Byrne asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And what time was this?’

  The man thought for a moment. ‘It had to be around seven thirty. Around there anyway. I got home from work, took a shower, got ready to go out. I met some friends for a quick drink.’

  ‘Where exactly did you see him?’ Byrne asked.

  He pointed to the rear of the block, the alleyway that cut between the row houses. ‘He was standing right there, right behind his house.’

  ‘What was he doing?’

  He shrugged. ‘Just standing there, really. His back was to me. I thought he might have been watering that small garden he has there, but he didn’t seem to have the hose in hand.’

  ‘Were you walking up the block?’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘I was getting into my car. Edwin looked to be lost in thought, so I didn’t say anything or call out.’

  Byrne just listened.

  ‘But now that I think about it, it was kind of odd.’

  ‘Odd in what way?’

  ‘As I was getting into my car, I thought I heard someone singing.’

  ‘Singing?’

  ‘Yeah, it was soft, but I heard it.’

  ‘Mr Channing was singing?’

  ‘No, it wasn’t him.’

  ‘Might it have been a radio?’ Byrne asked. ‘Maybe someone had a television on with the windows open? Maybe a car stereo?’

  ‘All of that is possible, I guess. But for some reason, I had the feeling that someone was standing in his garden, and that person was singing.’

  Byrne took this in. ‘So this was singing, not humming. Not like someone humming while they work.’

  ‘No, it was definitely singing. Kind of a chant, actually. It was definitely a woman’s voice, or maybe a girl’s. Definitely female, though. Pretty voice.’

  ‘It sounded like it was coming from behind his house?’

  ‘It did,’ he said. ‘As I pulled away, I glanced over, and I thought I saw someone standing in front of him. I can’t be sure, because he has those two white brick columns next to his garden, but it looked like maybe there was a girl standing there, or a very petite woman.’

  ‘What can you tell me about this woman?’

  The man shrugged. ‘I’m not even sure I saw her. I thought I saw a figure in white, but by the time I turned around in the driveway on the next block and drove back past the alley, he was already inside the house, and there was no one in the garden.’

  ‘And you didn’t hear any more singing?’

  ‘No,’ he said.

  Byrne glanced at Bontrager, who shook his head. He had nothing to ask or add.

  ‘That’s the last time I saw him alive,’ Kershaw said. He looked at Bontrager, then at Byrne, a slight sheen to his eyes. ‘You never know, do you?’

  Byrne knew what he meant. He’d dealt with it for so many years, made so many notifications, that it had become almost rote. He’d always subscribed to the theory that there were two things for which a person was never prepared: the moment someone walked into your life, and the moment they walked out. Yes, if someone was in hospice care, you could see it coming, could try to prepare yourself. His mother had been in the hospice for her final two weeks. It softened the blow, but nothing could ever fully pull the punch. It had been more than ten years since his mother’s passing, and there were still times when he would be on a crowded street in the city, hear a woman’s laugh, and turn half expecting to see her walking toward him, her red coat on, her strawberry-blond hair pulled up into a French twist.

  It was never her.

  ‘No,’ Byrne said. ‘You never know.’

  He wrapped up the interview, gave Kershaw his card, along with the standing request for him to call if he remembered anything, or saw the mysterious woman in white again.

  While Bontrager headed off to the forensic lab to check the status of the blood evidence collected at the scene, Byrne stood across from the death house, leaning against his car. He looked at the cracked asphalt at his feet. Within the past twenty-four hours, someone had possibly stood in this same spot, about to commit murder.

  As the energy of a spring morning flowed around him, Byrne blocked it all out, three questions circling:

  Who triggered the medical alert after Channing died?

  Why was the killer taking pictures?

  Who was singing?

  Byrne looked up to see Terry Nugent exiting the Channing house. Nugent was a seasoned officer in the crime scene unit, having once worked for the Delaware state police in the same capacity.

  ‘We have it?’ Byrne asked.

  Nugent held up a small paper evidence envelope. He crossed the street to where Byrne was standing and, with the forceps in his right hand, gently removed the item from the bag. Although Byrne had little doubt, the single bullet confirmed what he already knew. He was far from a ballistics expert, but you did something a number of years, and certain aspects of the job became habit.

  ‘Good work,’ he said.

  ‘All in a night.’

  ‘Where was it?’

  Nugent pointed to the house, toward the right front corner. ‘It went into the middle drawer of that old breakfront in the dining room.’

  Byrne knew the answer to his next question but asked it anyway. It was the way of the job.

  ‘Just the one?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  He knew this because there had been one victim, bound and gagged and executed. This caliber–which Byrne estimated to be a 9 mm, perhaps a .380–placed at the center of the chest, meant it would not take more than one shot.

  Bound people didn’t run.

  As a second CSU van arrived, Byrne walked to the rear of the Channing property. There was indeed a small container garden, all of the plants still quite young.

  Next to the garden was a large pot with what looked to be a withered orange tree. Something in the tree caught Byrne’s eye. It was a piece of cloth, tied to a low branch.

  He stepped inside the house and got the attention of one of the CSU techs, who followed him back out. The tech took a series of photographs of the piece of cloth in situ, as well as a brief video record showing the location. He then pulled a pair of latex gloves from his pocket and put them on. He reached up, gently untied the twine.

  Walking over to the small patio table, he unrolled a large piece of glossy paper, put the cloth down on it to avoid any cross-contamination and smoothed it.

  The cloth was about twelve inches square. It looked to be a linen handkerchief, cream in color, with a blue lace trim. At the center was scrawled a single word. The five letters, all capitals, spanned edge to edge.

  As unnerving as the fact that the killer or killers might have marked their territory with this message, two things leapt out at Byrne.

  The word was written in a dark brown fluid. There was little doubt that it was blood.

  Then there was the word itself, a word of which Byrne knew the meaning but had no idea of the context.

  There, in the middle of the cloth, like a cipher, was written:

  TENET.

  5

  County Louth, Ireland, July 1941

  Máire Fay Glover hid behind the curtain in the small room next to the surgery.

  She had long ago grown used to the smells, both septic and antiseptic, but on this day the redolence was particularly strong, thick with the metal of blood and the foul loam of feces. She tried to sip small breaths of air through her pursed lips.

  At fourteen she was old enough to pass for one of the scullery maids, and often, just by tying back her hair with a kerchief, and hoisting a kettle full of water from the well into the kitchen, or carrying a lapful of potatoes in her apron from the garden to the pantry, she went all but unnoticed.

  Indeed, some of the nurses, and a few of the doctors, thought she worked there, or at least was a volunteer.

  Some days Máire would stop in the glen to pick flowers, if they were in season. Young girls with flowers in
hospitals were smiled at, fawned over at times, but generally passed like ghosts in blue moonlight.

  The man in bed 102 had been at the hospital for more than a month now, and in all this time had received not a single visitor. Nor, in all that time, had he once opened his eyes. He was fed through a tube, washed with a sponge and a face cloth and did his dirty business into bedpans. Once a fortnight the man who owned the barber shop on the high street–Mr Theodore Ferley–would come and shave him with a straight razor. Afterwards he applied witch hazel, and a scented cream.

  But still not a word from the man.

  Not during the day, anyway.

  Once, on an evening in June, Máire had been tidying up the kitchen and thought she heard something. She stopped, cocked her head to the sound, listened again. It was the man. He had clearly mumbled something. Máire stole to the hallway, looked about the ward. There were only two other men, both sleeping.

  She took her corn broom, made little work of sidling up next to the man’s bed. The man spoke again. Then again. Máire found that she had been holding her breath the entire time. After a short while he began to speak–eyes still closed–in full sentences, as if this were some sort of confessional, as if he were trying to rid himself of some terrible burden. Máire watched his eyes, saw the movement beneath his eyelids, moving side to side, upwards and downwards. She wondered if the things the man was describing were playing out in his mind like some kind of cinema.

  That evening, and for many evenings after, he spoke of the places he’d been, the things he had witnessed, and the things he’d done, all the time his eyes looking at some hidden world, an inner world, a place that lived only in his mind.

  Máire Fay Glover wondered if the doctors knew the things the man had seen and done.

  It didn’t matter. She knew.

  And it made all the difference.

  She’d finally found him.

  On the last day of spring, just after the breakfast dishes were cleared and morning rounds made, the man opened his eyes.

  It was so sudden, so unexpected, Máire nearly leapt from her skin.

  She had never seen eyes so blue.

  The man slowly turned his head to see her. It was then that Máire realized she’d not properly prepared for this moment. After all this time, she was not ready. She silently scolded herself for being so stupid, so ill-equipped. There was no color in her cheeks and her hair was unwashed.

  But not to worry. She looked at the man with the glamour, an ability women of her kind had always had.

  The man saw what she wanted him to see: the apple-cheeked fourteen-year-old County Louth colleen Máire Fay Glover.

  ‘My name is Liam,’ he said softly. His voice was thin and raspy, brittle from disuse. ‘Liam Farren.’

  She knew his name as she knew her own. ‘I know.’

  ‘Am I dead?’

  She took his hand in hers, remained silent for a moment. Then: ‘My name is Máire.’

  He raised his right hand slowly, extending his forefinger, the only one not bandaged. About halfway to her face he stopped, exhausted. It appeared as if he wanted to touch her hair, which she, of course, would have none of, not on this day. She took his hand in her own again, leaned forward and ran her cheek along the back of it. He closed his eyes at her soft touch.

  ‘Are you an angel?’ he asked.

  Máire smiled. ‘Something like that.’

  Later that day Máire returned. While tending to small chores in the ward, she caught the eye of the clinic’s head nurse, a stern woman of forty who held naught for clutter or the breaking of rules.

  The nurse pointed at Liam Farren. ‘He says you are family.’

  Máire glanced at her hands, said nothing.

  ‘Is this so?’

  Máire didn’t know what to say. She just nodded.

  The nurse, disbelieving, glanced between Máire and the man a few times, perhaps mining a resemblance.

  Máire looked for permission to cross over to the bed. The nurse eventually stepped aside.

  ‘Only a short while,’ she said. ‘Now that he is back among the living, the real work begins.’

  Among the living, Máire thought.

  ‘Yes, mum.’

  While Liam Farren slept, Máire slipped into the surgery and washed her hair. She returned with her mother’s silver comb in hand and began to brush her long tresses.

  She took the small poppet from her pocket, stroked the straw at its feet. She recited the poem from heart:

  Where dips the rocky highland

  Of Sleuth Wood in the lake,

  There lies a leafy island

  Where flapping herons wake…

  For the next two months Máire visited Liam Farren every day, bringing her gran’s home-made soups, often sneaking inside in the gloaming just to watch him sleep. His road to recovery was slow but steady, as she knew it would be.

  ‘You talked in your fevers, you did,’ she said one morning.

  His face darkened. ‘Did I now?’

  Máire nodded. She had secretly kept a journal of the things he’d said, some of it unintelligible, but much of it clear, as if he were dictating his life’s story to a proper steno grapher. Máire had at one time thought of the secretarial life, but her grades were only average, nor was there money for university.

  Before she left for the night, a fine summer evening in late August, she stopped at the foot of the bed of a man named Joseph MacRauch.

  MacRauch was a local man, a farrier by trade, a father of five who had come down with the cancer nearly six months gone, a scourge that had claimed not only half his weight but also his right leg.

  Máire had no feelings for the man other than pity. He was unknown to her. Still, his ravaged face, collapsed mouth and withering body weighed on her as she passed him each day.

  A week earlier the doctors gave him two weeks more to live. They had told his wife so. But Máire knew differently. Her kind always did. She peered into the hallway that evening and saw that all was hushed and dimmed for the night. A gentle breeze billowed the curtains.

  Máire removed her red cloth coat. Beneath it she wore her white gauze shift, as she was taught.

  She put a hand on the man’s shoulder. His skin was cool to the touch. It was almost as if he had made the crossing, but he still drew breath.

  Máire began to sing.

  On the melody she soared above the countryside, hovering over the corn stooks, over the trees in the forest that ringed the town, ever higher into the silver moonlight.

  The next morning, before the sun crested the trees, Joseph MacRauch was dead.

  6

  Philadelphia, 2015

  Assistant District Attorney for the County of Philadelphia Jessica Balzano considered her witness. He was darkly handsome, with coffee-brown hair, dark eyes, lashes to die for. He wore a navy-blue blazer, white Oxford shirt and tan slacks.

  He was the kind of witness about whom attorneys dreamed–direct, polite, forthright and, most important of all, believable.

  ‘Tell us, in your own words, what happened that day,’ Jessica said. ‘And please take your time.’

  The witness took the moment. ‘It was early,’ he said.

  ‘About what time was it?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Was it still dark or was it light?’

  ‘It was light.’

  ‘So, around seven o’clock?’

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘And we’re talking about the Friday in question?’

  The witness nodded.

  ‘I’m afraid you have to answer out loud,’ Jessica said.

  ‘It was Friday.’

  ‘And what happened?’

  The witness shrugged. This was clearly not easy for him. ‘The window got broken.’

  Jessica let the statement settle for a moment. ‘Do you know how the window got broken?’

  ‘I’m not sure.’

  ‘Now, you say the window was broken. Were both panes shattered?’
/>
  ‘I don’t know what that is.’

  ‘The window has an upper part and a lower part,’ Jessica said. ‘Those are the panes.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘Were both of them broken?’

  The witness shook his head. ‘Just the bottom part.’

  ‘Would you say that the majority of the broken glass was on the inside or the outside?’

  Another shrug. ‘On the outside, I guess.’

  ‘Would you agree that the window did not break itself?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said softly.

  ‘And would you also agree that there is a very real possibility that the window was broken by a football?’

  No answer.

  ‘A football you have been told many times not to throw in the house?’ Jessica added.

  Still no answer. None was expected. Jessica walked around the table, leaned against it and crossed her arms.

  ‘What do you have to say for yourself?’ she asked.

  ‘Am I guilty?’

  ‘I think so, honey.’

  Jessica’s seven-year-old son Carlos, perched on a barstool in their kitchen, studied his shoes.

  ‘What’s my sentence?’ he asked.

  ‘We’re considering time off for helping your mother with her cross-examination skills.’

  ‘Okay.’

  Jessica glanced at her watch. ‘Let’s get you to school,’ she said. ‘We’ll consider the penalty phase when I get home from work.’

  Carlos Balzano looked at his hands, as if they were in shackles. When he looked up and smiled, the City of Philadelphia, and his mother, forgave every one of his crimes.

  The case was the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania versus Earl Carter. The charges were commercial robbery and misdemeanor assault.

  When Judge Althea Gipson was seated, the opposing counsel put on their game faces.

  Jessica had been ready for this moment for weeks.

  Since leaving the police force, where she had been a homicide detective for nearly a decade, she had steadily risen through the ranks of newer ADAs, much to the consternation of some of her fellow prosecutors. Jessica had expected the palace intrigue. When she’d joined the homicide unit, she had pushed hard against those who whispered behind her back that she’d gotten the assignment due to her gender, or the fact that her father was one of the most decorated cops in the history of the PPD.